With my other comment upthread taken into account, and some awkward but necessary discussion about mental health gotten out of the way, I wonder if it might be an interesting idea to try track/rally racing.

My thinking is here that if your friend has ADHD, that naturally imposes a "don't want to develop focus on details because not interesting" <-> "unaware of details in everyday life because no developed subconscious awareness of them" problem.

Track and rally racing could neatly solve both sides of this status quo by merging them a la "oh no must learn to focus on details so as not to flip car and die". The idea would be to create a situation that is interesting enough to supercede the "I will treat this situation like a TV remote I have no idea how to use and push all the buttons on it until it works" instinct, by tuning the mental stimulus on the situation to correct for the inattentiveness threshold. A bit like putting music on to concentrate, just... faster. It's crazy enough it might work, *if* the caveats and risks can be managed.

Apparently race drivers have the lowest reflexes of any sport. That sounds both like a good skill to have if you're inattentive, and kind of mutually incompatible with inattentiveness in the first place (like if you're a race driver it would basically just kick the inattentiveness out the window to some extent).

Obviously this is a vErY bAd iDeA on its face, and would only be wise after some analysis of mental dysfunction and if this person was prepared to listen to everything the trained driver in the passenger seat was instructing them to do (in terms of pacing and learning and not simply just going "yay!" *floor accelerator*).

I don't think he is mentally dysfunctional, beyond possibly ADHD. He just finished his PhD, and is fluent in 3 languages (English, Spanish, Japanese). If he finds something he's interested in, he'll dedicate his whole life to it and even minimize his social life until he's achieved whatever goal he's set out. I don't know what you'd call that. Driving is a thing he does in between the things he really wants to do, which is work and study mostly.

> if this person was prepared to listen to everything the trained driver in the passenger seat was instructing them to do

Not really his personality. Definitely a "figure it out yourself" type, and puts boundaries around the help and advice he asks for. Fiercely independent is I guess what you'd call it, definitely because of how he grew up (which I gather his family housed him, and fed him, but he mostly took care of himself emotionally).

Definitely one of the more interesting people I know. Incredibly brilliant and talented at certain things, and wayyyyyyyy behind the curve in other areas.

> If he finds something he's interested in, he'll dedicate his whole life to it and even minimize his social life until he's achieved whatever goal he's set out. I don't know what you'd call that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocus

Zooming out into the abstract, it's interesting to observe the hazy relationship between ADHD and autism: https://web.archive.org/web/20220313151543/https://twitter.c... - this is IMO an (interesting) example of structural multitasking/executive function issues and not just generalized hand-wave obsession.

>> if this person was prepared to listen to everything the trained driver in the passenger seat was instructing them to do

> Not really his personality. Definitely a "figure it out yourself" type, and puts boundaries around the help and advice he asks for.

I have to admit I'm actually the same as this, due to a combination of learning difficulties and compounded negative experiences associated with getting things wrong. I still typically view tasks or opportunities in a very guarded way and tend to put a lot of conditions on things in an attempt to pin down the "win" state.

Hmm, the trained driver could instead demonstrate several possible ways the car could be flipped, in a (very relatively) controlled and safe way.

> Fiercely independent is I guess what you'd call it, definitely because of how he grew up (which I gather his family housed him, and fed him, but he mostly took care of himself emotionally).

I was wondering about the emotional availability thing, very good point. It's so annoying how learning difficulties can be compounded so exponentially by receiving the wrong input :(

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In a total coincidence I just discovered https://old.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin earlier today - when I first stumbled on the Kevin concept some time ago (from the specific comment I linked) I had the fairly "haha so dumb" stereotype response, but reading so many stories in one place a deeper theme emerges around developmental balance and equilibrium. Half of these people are not hopeless lost causes but adequately-functioning people with a couple of mental health issues that just happen to cluster too closely around the "??!?!" end of the cognitive dissonance spectrum in ways that on first impression look like things a person should "just" have sorted out, and which are entirely the person's fault (with no consideration of circumstances etc) if they don't. It's a tad depressing this is a very nonscalable perspective I guess. I'd probably be a mid-range candidate for that subreddit myself ._.

I am not clear if you are suggesting my friend is on the autism spectrum or not.

But let me say: I would be surprised if he is. You probably have a mental image of how he speaks, and how he relates with people and it is probably wrong.

He is a very charming person, as well as incredibly good at reading people. In his native language (Japanese) he can charm the pants off of anyone. I liken it to anecdotes of how Bill Clinton can win over even bitter political opponents once they meet in person. I have never seen anything like it. He is still pretty charming in his other languages.

He can talk with a total stranger for just a few minutes and come away with something incredibly insightful about their character that I had never understood even knowing those people myself for years. His PhD is in Business Psychology.

But despite all this he is also kind of an obsessive loner driven by interests. As I say, he is one of the most interesting people I know.

Thanks very much for humoring my curiosity and engagement :) I'm developmentally catching up on, well, understanding people in general (alongside *gestures at everything*, now I *can*) so I'm very interested.

> I am not clear if you are suggesting my friend is on the autism spectrum or not.

I actually have no particular leaning in either direction because I know I don't have enough data. Unfortunately this directly translated to me leaving the bit about autism hanging somewhat. I'm... not really sure how to "cross the T" in this instance actually.

> But let me say: I would be surprised if he is. You probably have a mental image of how he speaks, and how he relates with people and it is probably wrong.

Noted, and very interesting. (I incidentally have a giant void because I have no data.)

I think I vaguely understand what you mean - autistic people (particularly high-functioning types) tend to have a... very hard to describe oddity about their high-level presentation and carriage in general, the way they look at the world, their mannerisms and idiosyncrasies, etc. Kind of a cross between executive dysphoria and the ("and now we close the tab :D") unsettlement I associate with trypophobia (fear of holes in things) - it's like a random bunch of things are either missing or developmentally short-circuited in a way that's both hard to pinpoint but can be just... off.

Some autistic people seem to be able to technically absolutely nail communication, and in the grand scheme of improbable things I might go "......?" about whether this person has autism to some extent, but practically speaking I see where you're coming from since autism is an incredibly fragmenting disorder and communication is basically the pinnacle of psychological and emotional expression and dexterity (for want of a better way to put it), and requires a rock-solid foundation of cohesion in order to, well, not wind up as the above ^.

So, one less thing to have to worry about I guess.

> He is a very charming person, as well as incredibly good at reading people. In his native language (Japanese) he can charm the pants off of anyone. I liken it to anecdotes of how Bill Clinton can win over even bitter political opponents once they meet in person. I have never seen anything like it. He is still pretty charming in his other languages.

I've always wanted to learn how to do that - try as I might to focus on harmony and cohesion I tend to get tangled up in semantics about behavioral minutiae and trip over my shadow (as it trips over itself). I don't have great attention span in this area ._.

> He can talk with a total stranger for just a few minutes and come away with something incredibly insightful about their character that I had never understood even knowing those people myself for years. His PhD is in Business Psychology.

Coooool.

> But despite all this he is also kind of an obsessive loner driven by interests. As I say, he is one of the most interesting people I know.

Hrm. I just remembered something I forgot about reading on here a while back... it's in The Bookmarks, somewhere, hopefully I can re-find it again one day lol. It was about a person who became a master at picking pockets in entertainment settings, who'd had an experience with some sort of coordinational disorder - perhaps something like polio, or a neurological issue - that was able to be rectified around 4-7, but required he basically re-learn how to walk and coordinate his limbs. Reflecting on the article at the time I wondered if having to concentrate on relearning proprioception, coordination and dexterity at pretty much the peak mental learning/integration period left him with a much higher-fidelity conscious mental map of how those normally-subconscious processes work internally, and paved the way to naturally hone a 10x level of proficiency and fluency in how humans move, where their focus and attention is, etc.

Generalizing this idea, on the one hand the mental early-development integration process is kind of an incredible feat of empathetic normalization and search for balance and equilibrium, on the other hand its function and operation is not at all immune to influence by constitutional and environmental context. Extrapolating off of the bits about emotional availability mentioned upthread, I wonder if there's any correlation between early impactful/formative experiences and the present-day balance of equilibrium and cohesion (psychology, charm and perception) on one side of the coin, and guarded and wary learning/possibly executive focus/trust on the other.

It's perhaps plausible to imagine a self-healing/rebalancing process that identified a need to take charge and internalized that from a certain perspective (eg, an early deep impression that being hyper-aware of, understanding and winning other people would drastically improve survival instincts) and maximized for that. Now I'm wondering (from a systems analysis perspective) whether the hyperfocus/loner perspective was a sort of flip-side of that emotional commitment (eg due to what might be described as paperclip maximization), or simply the byproduct of ADHD.

Huh. I'm not really sure where to go with this now :) on the one hand building accurate understandings of how the human mind develops and works is something I greatly appreciate the opportunity to pursue, on the other hand my empathy isn't used to the "screwdriver acquired" and "now the personality is in several pieces on the table" bit! That part's awkward.

At that point they're a danger for others on the road.